LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVEFISITY PUBLICATIONS
1912 TRUSTEES- SERIES NO. 22
DEDICATION
OF THE
LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY
Leland Stanford Jr. University
SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER 3. 1912
ADDRESSES
OF
TIMOTHY HOPKINS
EMMET RIXFORD
DAVID STARR JORDAN
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA
PUBUSHED BY THE UNIVERSITY
1912
LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS
1912 TRUSTEES' SERIES NO. 22
DEDICATION
OF THE
LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY
Leland Stanford Jr. University
SAN FRANCISCO. NOVEMBER 3, 1912
ADDRESSES
OF
TIMOTHY HOPKINS
EMMET RIXFORD
DAVID STARR JORDAN
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA
PUBUSHED BY THE UNIVERSITY
1912
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DEDICATION OF THE LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY
OF LELAND STANFORD JR. UNIVERSITY
On November 3, 1912, the building intended to house the Lane
Medical Library of Leland Stanford Jr. University, in connection
with the Medical Department of the University, was formally dedi-
cated at San Francisco.
Addresses were given on that occasion by Mr. Timothy Hopkins,
President of the Board of Trustees, by Dr. Emmet Rixford, Professor
of Surgery, and by David Starr Jordan, President of the University.
These addresses are included in this publication.
INTRODUCTION
President Hopkins presided and opened the meeting with the fol-
lowing words :
We meet to dedicate this handsome hbrary building to the cause
of education and to humanity, and in behalf of the Board of Trustees
of Stanford University, I welcome you. The Reverend Bradford
Leavitt will open the exercises with prayer.
After the prayer, President Hopkins introduced Dr. Rixford as
follows :
It is no severe strain upon the imagination to believe that, as time
rolls on, the three great metropolitan cities of the United States will be
Chicago, in its center, and New York and San Francisco upon its two
seaboards. A city becomes a metropolis, in the broad acceptance of the
term, at that stage in its development when, its commercial and financial
resources being firmly established, it can turn attention to the Arts and
Sciences and adorn itself with libraries, museums, art galleries, opera
houses, and other evidences of the cultured side of life.
Today, in opening this Medical library to the public, our city by the
Golden Gate has met one more requirement for entrance into the metro-
politan sisterhood, she is one step nearer the brilliant destiny awaiting her.
The cities of the United States in which special buildings are devoted
to medical libraries are few in number, and this building, in addition to
marking an epoch in our metropolitan progress, has the distinction of
being the first structure of a strictly non-utilitarian character (other than
churches) to be completed in the rebuilding of our municipality. The
collection of books it contains may also well be a subject of civic pride,
since it ranks among the greatest in size and importance of the med-
ical libraries in America.
The Levi Cooper Lane Library of Medicine and Surgery was found-
ed, and this building erected, with funds provided by Dr. Levi Cooper
Lane and Pauline C. Lane, his wife.
Dr. Lane devoted for many years both his time and his fortune to
medical education, and this manifestation of the foresight and generosity
of himself and Mrs. Lane is an appropriate and fitting climax to his life's
work.
The formation and care of the library was intrusted to the Directors of
the Cooper Medical College, who transferred it to Stanford at the same
time that they deeded to that University the property and equipment of
the college. Results show that their work was well done.
Dr. Emmet Rixford, a pupil of and an associate with Dr. Lane in
Cooper Medical College — and, we are glad to add, now of Stanford —
has always taken a deep interest in the library, and has loyally devoted
such time as could be spared from the practice of the busiest of profes-
sions, to its care and development. This intimate connection with the
library enables him to speak authoritatively, and he has kindly consented
to give us its history.
A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY OF THE LANE MEDICAL
LIBRARY AND OF COOPER MEDICAL COLLEGE
Dr. Rixford said:
We are assembled here this afternoon to participate in the formal
opening of the Lane Medical Library and in the dedication of this beau-
tiful building, an event which is of the greatest importance in the devel-
opment of medical education and the progress of medical science on the
Pacific Coast. But this meeting marks another event of perhaps even
greater significance in the history of medical education in Western
America — the transformation of Cooper Medical College into the Med-
ical Department of Leland Stanford Junior University. It is a matter of
gratification to me that I should have been requested by the Trustees of
the University to speak on this occasion of the history of the Lane Med-
ical Library and Cooper Medical College. It gives me an opportunity to
tell of the growth of my most beloved hobby and to say, as it were, a last
word for Cooper College, which for the past fort}' years has stood at the
front in the advancement of medical education in California and has been
alma mater to so large a proportion of the practitioners of the Pacific
Coast.
First of the library : Previously to 1895 there had been made several
sporadic attempts to gather together a collection of medical books in
Cooper College for the use of its students. Members of the Faculty con-
tributed from their private libraries and the College bought a few books,
notably a set of the Sydenham Society's publications at the suggestion of
— 6 —
Dr. S. O. L. Potter, then Professor of the Principles and Practice of
Medicine. Dr. W. D. Johnston and Dr. Charles H. Steele, who suc-
cessively served as librarian, made various attempts to arouse interest in
the library. In my student days the shelves contained a much-worn copy
of Gray's "Anatomy," Dalton's "Physiology," Pepper's and Reynold^s
"Systems of Medicine,'' and some other text books, a set of Wood's
"Medical Monographs" and a copy of the British Encyclopaedia. With
no regularly attending librarian, the books were scattered about, were
never in their places and developed an extreme volatility so that Dr.
Steele, when Librarian, in desperation locked up the books securely in
glass cases so that at least they could be seen.
It had been the custom for each graduating class on leaving the col-
lege to signalize its sense of obligation to its alma mater by making a
parting gift to the head janitor. One class, I remember, gave him a gold
watch and another a diamond ring. When the time approached for my
class to graduate — 1891 — some of us conceived the revolutionary idea
that it would be more fitting for our class, of which we feh singularly
and justly proud, to inaugurate the custom of presenting to the library
a set of books — perhaps some work of reference. The plan naturally met
with much resistance on the part of the men who had received favors
from the presiding janitor. After much debate we finally arrived at a
compromise — we doubled the amount of the usual subscription that we
might carry out both these worthy objects. I was appointed treasurer
of the fund and had little difficulty in making the collection, except from
a very small minority. One of this group, a big raw-boned fellow,
loudly proclaimed that he had paid his tuition fees and owed the college
nothing. However, it should be recorded every member of the class paid
his subscription and the money was sufficient to purchase a well known
"Atlas of Skin Diseases" for the library and a handsome ring forthe
janitor. Of course the names of the members of the class were inscribed
in the Atlas on a fly leaf.
In 1898 a signal departure in the method of instruction was inaug-
urated in Cooper Medical College by the creation of a salaried Profes-
sorship of Pathology and the election of Dr. William Ophiils to the
position. Of course a paid pathologist must have books so the library's
two friends. Dr. Barkan and Dr. Hirschfelder, gave each $100 for
books on pathology and physiology. From now on the library was a
vigorously growing youngster with an insatiable appetite. A system of
exchange' was inaugurated, the State Library at Sacramento was invaded
and some of its duplicates bought, older practitioners were importuned
to contribute their accumulations of pamphlets, journals, etc., others to
contribute their current periodicals. A number of Eastern medical
libraries gave very material assistance in the contribution of an occa-
sional box of books — notably the Library of the New York Academy of
Medicine and the Boston Medical Library. The Library of the Surgeon
General's office, perhaps the greatest collection of medical literature in
— 7 —
the world, receiving as it does a vast quantity of duplicate material, per-
mits librarians of struggling libraries to take what they need from this
duplicate material. On each of several visits to Washington I spent a
day or so rummaging in the duplicate room and digging out a lot of
books, reports, transactions and odd periodicals which were of use to the
College library.
One of our ambitions was to gather together the fast disappearing
material out of which some day might be written a comprehensive his-
tory of the medical profession of the Pacific Coast. We set about to
secure a copy of everything which had been printed on medical matters
in California. Aside from a few medical journals, most of this material
is in the form of pamphlets. The pioneer physicians of the Golden State
were famous pamphleteers. Such things could only be found in second-
hand book shops and in dusty and forgotten closets consorting with old
shoes, carpet bags, and boot-jacks. As the older practitioners dropped
off one by one, these invaluable accumulations of pamphlets were ruth-
lessly destroyed, while the comparatively worthless text-books, out of
date before they were printed, were religiously preserved. We carried
on a deal of correspondence in an effort to forestall this slaughter, asking
for everything, no matter how worthless, for even old college announce-
ments were of value to us. We had the satisfaction of securing all of
the periodicals of California and a mass of ephemera which will be in-
valuable for the object stated.
During all this time Dr. L. C. Lane, President of the College, ap-
parently paid little attention to the College library beyond contributing
occasionally a few books, among them a set of the Index Catalogue of
the Library of the Surgeon General's Office; but one evening in 1898 he
sent for me to come to his house. My astonishment knew no bounds
when he announced that he and Mrs. Lane had just made their wills and
wanted me to be one of the witnesses thereto. Dr. Lane then gave me a
resume of the provisions of their wills, saying that it was their desire that
the residue of their property should be devoted to the purposes of a Med-
ical Library.
Dr. Lane died February 9, 1902, leaving his entire estate to his wife.
She died within the year leaving one-third of the entire estate to Cooper
Medical College for the purposes of a Medical Library and a "special
library building therefor," one-third being all of an estate which, under
the law of the State of CaHfornia, can be conveyed by will to a corpora-
tion or for charitable purposes. The remaining two-thirds were left to
the then President of the College.
The one-third of the estate which the college received for the librar)'
consisted of some $40,000 in money and a one-third interest in a large
amount of unproductive real estate of the value approximately of $150,-
000, more than would be needed for a simple college library but utterly
inadequate to erect a monumental building for a general medical library
such as Mrs. Lane had planned, and at the same time provide sufficient
— 8 —
endowment for its maintenance. The sale of several pieces of the real
estate enabled the Directors of Cooper College to purchase as a site for
the Library the lot on which this building stands, while the interest on
the $35,000 which remained in the bank furnished a small fund for the
purchase of books.
After Mrs. Lane's death the librar_v was enriched by the private
library of Dr. Lane, consisting of some 2,000 volumes, containing many
medical classics and some valuable historical material, and raising the
number of volumes in the library to 10,000, exclusive of duplicates.
In furtherance of their trust under the will of Mrs. Lane, the Direc-
tors of Cooper College by resolution of August 13, 1906, founded the
Lane Medical College, contributing the college library as its nucleus,
and set about making plans for the Library building. When it came to
the question of endowment the Directors were informed that the two-
thirds of the estate bequeathed by Mrs. Lane to the president of the cor-
poration were considered by the latter a personal gift and would not be
available either for the Library or the Lane Medical Lectures. This of
course put an effectual stop to construction of the Library at that time.
In 1906, through the goodness of Dr. Abraham Jacobi of New York,
we were enabled to purchase at a most advantageous price the great col-
lection of duplicates of the New York Academy of Medicine — the bulk
of which was the former Library of the New York Hospital — which
added some 28,000 volumes to our stacks, exclusive of duplicates, and
made the Lane Medical Library the largest west of Chicago and the
seventh in size in the United States.
When Cooper Medical College conveyed its properties to Stanford
University it transferred to the Trustees of the University its Lane
Medical Library Trust. How well the University authorities have ful-
filled the trust, advancing funds to the library against the landed endow-
ment as security so as to make the library immediately available, this
beautiful building testifies.
The conservative Trustees, however, were willing to advance in this
manner only $80,000 and contemplated erecting a Library building on
the L or key lot adjoining, but the Directors of Cooper College felt that
a building in a narrow lot in the middle of the block would not have the
monumental character desired for the Lane Medical Library, so they ap-
propriated from the reserve funds of the college $20,000 which enabled
the Trustees to erect this splendid building on its present site. Of course
the building and its equipment cost a good deal more in the end, but the
Trustees have the consciousness of a good piece of work well done.
Dr. A. Barkan had created a fund in Cooper College of $5,000,
known as the Teachers' Fund, the income of which was expended in
traveling expenses of some member of the teaching staff to assist him in
visiting other medical institutions. When the properties were turned
over to Stanford University, there being no longer any use for the Teach-
ers' Fund of Cooper College, the Directors, with Dr. Barkan's consent,
— 9_
transferred this sum to Stanford University as an endowment of a sec-
tion on opthalmology in the Lane Medical Library — to be named for Dr.
Barkan. Dr. Barkan added another $5,000, which made an endowment
of the Barkan Library of Opthalmology and Otology of a round $10,000.
Now that Dr. Henry Gibbons, Jr., the students' friend and for forty
years the Dean of the College, has passed away his old associates in the
faculty and his former students have undertaken to raise a similar fund
for a section of the Library on obstetrics as a memorial to Dr. Gibbons,
by which in a sense his life's work as a teacher maj- be continued.
The history of Cooper Medical College is bound up in the lives and
achievements of two remarkable men — Levi Cooper Lane and his uncle,
Elias Samuel Cooper, for whom the college was named.
Dr. Cooper began the study of medicine at the age of sixteen, receiv-
ing his degree from the St. Louis University in 1843. He entered prac-
tice in Danville, then moved to Peoria. Illinois, where for several years
he maintained a dissecting room in connection with his office. He knew
and greatly admired Dr. G. L. Brainerd, founder of Rush Medical College,
Chicago, and became fired with the desire to emulate him and found a
medical college on the Pacific Coast. After a tour in Europe, he started
for Portland, Oregon. A companion on the steamer was Captain James
M. McDonald and the friendship which ripened on this voyage was the
reason for Captain McDonald's gift to Cooper College, fortv years after-
wards, of the two fifty varas of land on which Lane Hospital was erected,
besides $25,000 in money for college purposes.
Dr. Cooper by some persuasion stopped in San Francisco and met
with signal success in surgical practice. He was a leading spirit in the
movement which resulted in the formation of the State Medical Society
in 1856, and in that year began the publishing of the San Francisco Med-
ical Press. In 1858 he founded a Medical school in San Francisco, the
first on the Pacific Coast, naming it the Medical Department of the Uni-
versity of the Pacific. Dr. Cooper made the very remarkable announce-
ment of a course in operative surgfery on animals as affording the stu-
dents unusual opportunities of perfecting themselves in operative tech-
nique. In default of a charter the school got its authority
for the granting of degrees in Medicine by an affiliation with the Univer-
sity of the Pacific in San Jose. They had at first no students, but the
facultv held regular sessions and lectured to each other. The school met
with the most intense criticism and opposition on the part of a large pro-
portion of the medical profession : it was called the "Cooper Shop," was
the object of scathing denunciation in the Pacific Medical Journal and
the California Medical Gazette. However, it persevered and graduated
a number of men who took prominent place in the medical profession of
California.
In the faculty were some very well known men — A. J. Bowie, Isaac
Rowell, J. F, Morse, R. Beverly Cole, Henry Gibbons (Sr.) and, after
— 10 —
i86o, L. C. Lane, who had resigned from the Navy and, at his uncle's
invitation, entered practice in San Francisco.
Sessions were held in the rooms in the top story of Dr. Cooper's
office on Mission Street, below Third. It is interesting to note that Dr.
Cole, who was dean or secretary of the faculty, felt that the modest
quarters, although rent free, were beneath the dignity of an institution
which was destined to take prominent place among the educational insti-
tutions of the country, and he urged the renting of some more conspic-
uous building up town ; in fact he paid the rent out of his own pocket for
a time of a part of Union Hall, which old San Franciscans will remember
stood on Howard Street near Fourth, but it was not many months before
they moved back into Dr. Cooper's building.
This school graduated twenty-eight students with the degree of
M. D. between the years 1859 and 1864, among them several who became
well known; Henrv Gibbons, Jr.. WilHam T- Younger (the dentist),
James Murphy, John E. Kunkler, M. A. Cachot, D. S. Deal, W. T. Gar-
wood.
Dr. Cooper died in 1862 at the age of forty, and the school, lacking
his strong leadership, soon went to decay and in 1864, when Dr. H. H.
Toland founded the Toland Medical College and erected a commodious
brick building on Stockton Street near the City and County Hospital,
which then was on Francisco Street at North Beach, the Medical Depart-
ment of the University of the Pacific ceased its activities and its students
continued their work in the new school.
It was not long, however, before the students petitioned the faculty
to invite Dr. Lane and Dr. Gibbons to become teachers in that school.
This was done and Dr. Lane became Professor of Physiology, and Dr.
Henry Gibbons (Sr.) became Professor of Materia Medicaand Thera-
peutics, and Dr. J. F. Morse (Sr.) Professor of Clinical Medicine. Dr.
Cole was not invited as he was out of favor with Dr. Toland. He was
subsequently avenged, however, when as a member of the Board of Su-
pervisors he was instrumertal in having the City and County Hospital
moved from the neighborhood of Dr. Toland's building to the extreme
opposite side of the town — the present site on Potrero avenue — and this
very shortly after Dr. Toland with much difficulty had secured access to
the hospital wards for his students. In the later sixties there were no
street cars running into the Mission, in fact many of the streets were not
yet graded. I do not hesitate to tell of this incident because Dr. Cole
often spoke of it jokingly in after years.
After six years, therefore, in 1870, because of internal dissension in
the school, the detail of which need not be mentioned here, Dr. Lane and
Dr. Gibbons resigned from the faculty of Toland College and reorganized
the old school with many of its old faculty, including A. J. Bowie, J. F.
Morse, J. P. Whitney as Emeritus Professors and R. Beverly Cole. Dr.
Henry Gibbons, Jr. was made Dean. All the students but one left Toland
and went into the new school, which in order to secure authority to grant
— 11 —
diplomas entered into relations with University (City) College, a Pres-
byterian school on Stockton Street where the City of Paris Building now
stands, and held its sessions in the college building. In recognition of
the services of this Presb>i:erian School, the Medical College, which soon
changed its name to that of the iledical College of the Pacific, gave free
tuition in medicine to one student each year nominated by the University
College and later by the Presbyterian Church, a custom which was
continued for many years after the Presbyterian college went out of
existence, that is, until about 1895. Though the purpose was to further
the cause of the medical missionary, not all who received free tuition m
this manner became missionaries ; some entered private practice.
In a short time Dr. Toland besought Dr. Lane and Dr. Gibbons to
let by-gones be by-gones and to come back into the Toland School but
it was characteristic of both these strong men not to retrace a step once
taken— besides they had the students. Dr. Toland then sought through
Dr. Cole to induce the students to return. Dr. Cole went, but no stu-
dents followed. Soon Dr. Toland made overtures to the Regents of the
University of California which resulted in the affiliation of the Toland
Medical College with the University in 1873.
The privilege of giving clinical instruction in the wards of the City
and County Hospital was obtained (in 1870) and an out-patient or am-
bulatory clinic was opened in the college building. Dr. John F. Morse
(Sr.) was chiefly instrumental in the establishment of this clinic and gave
it a great deal of attention, in consideration of which after his death in
1877 the faculty named it the Morse Dispensary, which name it bore for
fifteen years — even after the college became Cooper College.
In' 1882 the members of the faculty were invited by Dr. Lane to
form with him a new college to be known as Cooper Medical College in
honor of Dr. Lane^s uncle, Dr. Cooper. Dr. Lane had constructed with
his own funds and without consultation with or knowledge of the faculty
the great brick building now standing on the northeast corner of Sacra-
mento and Webster streets. Many people have thought that this build-
ing was constructed with money which Dr. Lane had received from his
uncle's estate. But the fact is that Dr. Lane received nothing from his
uncle's estate except some bills which were presented after the estate
was closed and which Dr. Lane paid. The only money that Dr. Lane re-
ceived from his family was the sum of $80.00 from his mother's estate.
When he had completed Cooper Medical College, he used these_ $80.00
for a pedestal to support the heart and brain of Dr. Cooper, which had
been preserved in an inner sanctum in the College museum.
Needless to say the invitation to form a new college was accepted
and Cooper Medical College was organized and incorporated under the
laws of California as a "corporation to do business without profit." At
this time, which was soon after the adoption by the State of California
of the so-called "New Constitution," there was no provision of law for
the incorporation of educational institutions as such.
— 12 —
Dr. Henr}' Gibbons, Jr., whom in those days they called Harry Gib-
bons, was elected Dean of the Faculty and Treasurer of the Corporation
— two positions which he held until his death.
In 1882 Dr. Lane founded a course of popular lectures to be given
in the college auditorium each winter whose object was the dissemina-
tion among the people of medical knowledge. To insure the perpetuation
of the course, which was designated the Lane Popular Lectures, he made
the giving of the lectures the condition on which he deeded the property
to the College.
The lectures were bitterly assailed as subversive of the dignity of
the medical profession. Their effect in removing the veil of mystery be-
hind which medicine masqueraded was looked upon with extreme dis-
favor, but the wisdom of the founder of the lectures is now seen clearly
enough, for the medical profession at last acknowledges that only through
the dissemination of medical knowledge can the public be taught to ap-
preciate the fact that medicine is no longer a matter of doctrine or school,
of dogma or faith, but is based on scientific observation of natural bio-
logic phenomena. Since then similar courses of lectures have been in-
augurated in other institutions, notably Harvard University Medical
School.
These lectures have been given annually to the present time and the
authorities of Stanford University propose to continue them though be-
cause of confusion in title with the Lane Medical Lectures, which have
a separate financial foundation, they have thought best to change the title
of the course.
About this time a determined effort (the second or third) to bring
the two schools together was made by dear old Doctor John LeConte,
when President of the University of California. In the goodness of his
heart he went so far as to have an appointment to a professorship in the
Medical Department of the University issued to each of the members of
the faculty of Cooper College. The effort was well meant but not well
timed, for Dr. Lane had just spent $150,000 of his money in construct-
ing the College building, and it was not in him to give up then. When a
committee of the Medical Faculty of the University waited on Dr. Lane
he stated that he was opposed to the proposed union, that in his opinion
there was room for the two schools, that the friendly rivalry which existed
between them was beneficial to both ; they could keep up the standard of
medical education, but if they united other and inferior schools would
surely rise up to take the place of one of them. When the matter was
brought up in his faculty Dr. Lane summarily closed the incident by say-
ing that if anyone wished to accept the appointment he had best do so at
once.
In 1889 Dr. Lane erected the easterly portion of the College build-
ing containing laboratory rooms and a large auditorium known as Lane
Hall.
In 1893 and 1894 Dr. Lane erected a hospital which he proposed to
— 13 —
call in honor of his wife The Pauline Lane Hospital but Mrs. Lane
thought the simpler designation, Lane Hospital, better and it was there-
fore adopted.
The Hospital was formally opened January i, 1895, by a surgical
operation performed by Dr. Lane in the hospital amphitheatre followed
by addresses by Dr. Lane and Dr. Edward R. Taylor. Lane Hospital was
intended as a teaching hospital to furnish clinical cases for the instruc-
tion of the students of Cooper College and was deeded by Dr. Lane to
the College corporation, together with the land on which it stands. Dr.
Lane's desires and intentions may best be expressed by quoting the words
inscribed by him in a marble tablet in the vestibule of the hospital :
"This hospital, erected in the year 1893 by Levi Cooper Lane, phy-
sician and surgeon, with money earned by himself in his profession, is
given by him to suffering humanity and to the healing art, in the hope
that the former may here find refuge and relief : the latter, exercise of its
humane skill and intelligent sympathy."
As was the case in almost everything Dr. Lane did, there were those
who opposed the erecting of the hospital. Property holders in the neigh-
borhood were fairly up in arms — one wrote Dr. Lane an anonymous
letter threatening to destroy him and his hospital by dynamite.
In 1895, soon after the opening of the Lane Hospital, Dr. Lane an-
nounced to the Board of Directors that he had finally brought to fruition
a plan which he had long cherished of founding a course of Medical Lec-
tures to be given annually in the college by eminent men in medicine and
the allied sciences, and that Professor Williem Macewen of Glasgow
had accepted the invitation to inaugurate the course by a series of lec-
tures in the summer of 1896 on the "Surgery of the Brain." The honor-
arium of the lecturer was to be $2,000 and ten lectures were to be given
each year, these to remain the property of the lecturer. In all, thirteen
courses have been given by men pre-eminent in their profession.
In inaugurating this course of lectures, Dr. Lane erected a marble
slab in Lane Hall describing the lectures and closing with the words
"founded and endowed by Levi Cooper Lane." Unfortunatel}', in the mat-
ter of endowment, Dr. Lane's fortune was for the most part invested in
unproductive real estate ; the money he had in bank he dared not deplete,
for his health began rapidly to fail and his earning power in his profes-
sion to dwindle, and he and Mrs. Lane needed the income of this fund
to live upon. He therefore postponed setting aside a definite sum for the
endowment of the lectures but paid the honorarium annually out of his
pocket. But after his death and that of Mrs. Lane, the College had no
funds which might be used for this honorarium. It was paid one year
by Mrs. Lane and the three following years by the President of the Col-
lege, who had received two-thirds of Mrs. Lane's estate. On his refusing
to continue this paj^ment or to make effectual the endowment of the
lectures, the course ceased. When, however. Cooper College was con-
veyed to Stanford University, the Trustees granted the Directors of the
— 14 —
College the privilege of determining to what purposes the reserve funds
of the College should be put. Until the union with Stanford University
had been efifected these reserve funds had been jealously guarded as fur-
nishing an income to offset the annual deficit incurred in the running of
the College, but under the University support the funds were not needed
for this purpose. The Directors of Cooper College therefore made a
number of much needed improvements in Lane Hospital and set aside
$25,000 for the endowment of the Lane Medical Lectures, which would
give an income sufficient to furnish the honorarium for a course of lec-
tures each second year. The Trustees accepted the fund for this purpose
and have arranged for a course of lectures for 1913.
The development of the curriculum of Cooper College is typical
of the development of the curriculum in most of the better schools of
medicine in this country. In the old Medical College of the Pacific the
course of lectures was given during six months, from June to November
— lectures for the most part repeated each year, and the student sat
dutifulh' on the benches and gravely listened to the same lectures he had
heard the year before. The lectures were supplemented, however, by
quizzes, often given in the evening, and the course in practical anatomy
was comparatively thorough and the students saw much practical work
in the offices of Dr. Cooper and Dr. Lane. In 1879 the course was length-
ened to three years and in 1896 to four — on a high school graduation or
equivalent examination as a requirement.
For a number of years beginning in 1878 an optional course of three
months' duration was given in the spring of eight to ten lectures a week
on special stibjects and in 1888 this course was made compulsory for the
last year of the curriculum. Most of the students took this optional
course or short term and made good use of the dissecting room.
As said above, the greatest single step forward looking towards
modern methods of teaching occurred in 1898 with the election of a paid
Professor of Pathology, and I may add that the chief credit for this de-
parture rested with Drs. Barkan and Hirschfelder. Another event of
scarcely less importance was the putting of the teaching of Physiology
on an academic basis, for which Cooper College was grateful to Professor
O. P. Jenkins of Stanford University who, in 1896 and for several years
thereafter, came from Palo Alto twice a week, giving a lecture and reci-
tation course and receiving no compensation beyond his traveling ex-
penses. On his own initiative he established a laboratory of Physiology
in Cooper College in which he had the assistance of R. L. Wilbur, a for-
mer pupil "(now Executive Head of the Medical Department of Stanford
University) who at the time was a student in Cooper College. The fac-
ulty gave $500 for equipment. The laboratory course was at first op-
tional but as practically all the students took it the course was soon made
compulsory. In 1900 Dr. W. E. Garrey was elected Professor of Physi-
ology and gave his entire time to his teaching.
While these events marked a new era in the method and
— 15 —
quality of the teaching, there was a reverse side to the pic-
ture. Previously to this time the expense of conducting the
College was small, and a considerable accumulation of profits resulted
from the students' tuition fees — but to the credit of the teaching staff be
it said that not one dividend of profit was ever distributed to the faculty.
In fact, with the exception of the nominal fees permitted the demonstra-
tors of anatomy, the lecturers and teachers gave their services without
monetary compensation. The nearest approach to a dividend occurred
when one of the faculty who had labored for years for the institution
and who had a very small income because of large demands on his time
being made by the fact that besides being a ph3rsician he was a clergy-
man, was stricken with a prolonged illness which proved his last the fac-
ulty voted him a gift of $500. The accumulation to the amount of $35,-
000 went to equip Lane Hospital, as said above ; and other payments had
to be made to the Hospital for several years, its income from patients
being less than its expenses. All the remaining accumulation, and later
all the profits of the Lane Hospital, were expended in making improve-
ments in the plant and for the hospital maintenance of an occasional
needy patient. Without endowment, Lane Hospital made no pretense to
being a charitable institution and yet did a great deal of charitable work.
Under the new order of things salaries had to be paid to the Physi-
ologist, the Anatomist, the Chemist, in fact, to all who occupied the so-
called non-practical chairs and each had to have one or more paid assis-
tants. Then each of these departments had its laboratory and the
laboratory expenses had to be met. The students' fees could not be in-
creased beyond $150 (they had previously been $100) per year — the in-
creased requirements lessened the number of students so that for the
first time in 1900 the expenses of the college were greater than its income
from students. This annual deficit was afterwards met, as said above,
by interest on the modest amount of invested funds.
Dr. Lane, with his faculty having built up the school, given the col-
lege its buildings and Lane Hospital and the four fifty varas of land,
free of debt, could not see why the younger men to whom he was about
to turn over the institution could not go on and develop it. As a stim-
ulus to the younger men. Dr. Lane had inserted into the deeds clauses
which forfeited the property to the State in case the future authorities of
the College should at any time unite Cooper College with any other insti-
tution. But Dr. Lane finally realized that times had changed, that the
cost of medical education had enormously increased, that loyalty and de-
votion were no longer sufficient, that from henceforth great monetary en-
dowment was necessary to the very life of the school, that the student
could no longer be expected to pay more than a fraction of the cost of
his training. With this realization Dr. Lane almost on his deathbed had
all the College real property conveyed to him by deed and the deed re-
corded, whereupon he redeeded it to the corporation without condition.
To those who knew Dr. Lane and his character this realization and this
— 16 —
act in his old age betokened the greatness that was in him.
The Directors of Cooper College, believing that it is right for
the Medical school to be a part of a greater educational in-
stitution, as is the case in all European universities, realizing
that sooner or later Stanford as well as the University of California
would have a Medical department, and being unwilling to have Cooper
College forced by university competition into the position of a minimum
requirement school when it had always during the forty years of its ex-
istence maintained its position as a maximum requirement school, cheer-
fully, though with many heartaches for the institution they loved, con-
veyed all the physical properties to the Trustees of Stanford University,
on the sole condition that the property be used for purposes of Medical
education in the sense of teaching young men and young women to be
practitioners of medicine and that the name of Dr. Lane be suitably com-
memorated — for these properties represented for the most part the earn-
ings of Dr. Lane in his profession.
The Trustees interpreted this commemoration of the name of Dr.
Lane in a most touching way — they provided in their resolution of ac-
ceptance of the property that each diploma of graduation from the Med-
ical Department of Leland Stanford Junior University should bear the
words, "Founded as Cooper Medical College, by Dr. Levi Cooper Lane."
This, with the Library, is Dr. Lane's monument — more enduring than
brick or stone.
THE DUTY OF STANFORD
President Hopkins in introducing President Jordan said:
The stimulus of scientific methods has vivified the study and intensi-
fied the practice of medicine. Science, in broadening the field of knowl-
edge and increasing the certainty of diagnosis and treatment, has by its
very impetus carried with it thoroughness of preparation. The pro-
fessor of Medicine must be an investigator as well as a teacher, and as
the education of a man of open mind is never ended, the earnest student
retains as a physician the investigating instinct.
The spur of his student days, to study and observe, has only been
changed to observe and study in his maturity; for, as Pasteur remarks,
"In the fields of observation chance favors only the mind which is pre-
pared." While Pasteur was proclaiming the value of preparation for
the work of research, it is just as surely the foundation of the rewards
of industry and ambition in the every day practice of medicine.
This is but meeting the requirements of our day, for the imperative
call is not — Flexner states — for a greater number of physicians, but for
a smaller number of better trained ones.
Here is the province of the university; it must start the student
along the right lines, instill into him high ideals, teach him to think and
to know, and thus prepare him for the years of ripening experience, for
experience only makes experts.
— 17 —
Stanford University has heard the call, and is earnestly striving to
meet these demands by raising and maintaining the standards of medical
education. Quality is its motto, and in the belief that it is benefiting hu-
manity, it gladly contributes its efforts and its means to the end and in
the hope that its graduates may be distinguished by this attribute.
In order to do the best todav one should know the best that was done
yesterday. A French author, under the spell of the subtle pleasure of
reading works of the past, has designated books as "the monuments of
vanished minds" ; it would not be unfitting to characterize the records of
the sciences as milestones along the road to progress, whose guidance we
need lest we stray from the path of ultimate achievement.
In none of the sciences is this guidance more needed than in med-
icine, and as herein lies the function of the library, we value it as a
potent influence in medical teaching and study, recognize its absolute
necessity in research, and its helpfulness to the practicing physician.
Stanford University has accepted the Lane Library trust with a full
appreciation of its significance both to medical education and to the
profession. Its importance has justified the University in liberally ap-
propriating means for book purchase and for maintenance. Pending
liquidation of library assets it has likewise advanced the funds to con-
struct this building, so that there might be no delays in its benefits.
California enjovs a splendid geographical isolation, which is not
without its advantages considering the opportunity it offers of engen-
dering a community of interest — ^the binding together of the efforts of
each for the benefit of all — and an abiding pride in the results of these
reciprocal efforts. This isolation, however, leaves a special professional
library here peculiarly dependent on its own resources, with no associate
or ally near to aid it, and enforces special efforts for its support and de-
velopment. J- 1 -J
Since the needs of the medical student are only a part of the wider
field of the usefulness of the library, the Trustees of Lane have put into
effect the policy of strengthening the library along the lines of the great-
est possible benefit to the practicing physician and the investigator.
They believe that the developing of this type of a great library will
have an invigorating and enduring influence upon both research and the
profession, and that in pursuing this policy they are but fulfilhng the
desire of the donors and building upon the foundation so wisely laid by
the Directors of Cooper Medical College, our predecessors in the trust.
The University has no false pride in the possession of the largest
medical library of 'anv college in the Americas, but is proud in having
been instrumental in making the dream of years a reality, and takes deep
satisfaction in placing at the service of the medical profession a library
constantly increasing in value and in a setting befitting its importance.
In October, 1891, the doors of Stanford were opened to its students,
and it is a happy coincidence that the coming of age of the University
— 18 —
should be commemorated by the opening of the doors of this library and
by her taking an active part in medical education.
During the past twenty-one years we have been fortunate in having
had but one President, and we have likewise been fortunate that David
Starr Jordan has been our President during the formative period of our
University. Educationally catholic and progressive, no one is better
qualified than Dr. Jordan to speak upon the timely topic of "The Relation
of the University to Medicine," which is the subject he has chosen to
present to us today.
THE RELATION OF THE UNIVERSITY TO MEDICINE
President Jordan said :
We have met today to mark a milestone in the history of Stanford
University on the one hand, and in the history of medical education on
the other. It is a milestone that we mark, not an epoch, for epoch mak-
ing events do not often appear more than once in a Hfe time. But a
milestone marks progress, even though after it is set up all shall go on as
before.
Stanford University is now twenty-one years old. Its days were
opened on a hopeful morning of October in California, where all days
are hopeful, just twenty-one years ago. It has come of age. It is old
enough to be doing the work of a grown university.
And there is no work of the University more worthy or more needed
than medical instruction and medical research, the training of men who
shall help their fellows in all their bodily ills, on the basis of the best and
fullest knowledge, while themselves adding day by day to the world's
stock of wisdom. In these days medical research stands on the firing
line of the advance of science. There is no branch of knowledge which
is moving more rapidly and there is none which contributes equally to
the aggregate of human welfare.
We dedicate today the home of the Lane Medical Library of Stan-
ford University to medical practice and medical research. It "is the gift
of the will of Mrs. Levi Cooper Lane. It begins its existence with a
handsome building, adequate for its needs for years to come. When it
must be extended we hope that the grateful people of San Francisco will
be here to see that all its needs are met.
It has already on this initial day a library of nearly forty thousand
volumes, all relating to medical practice and medical research, a good
number of books as you will see when you compare it with other libraries
devoted elsewhere to the same subject.
The importance to San Francisco of such a collection of medical
books kept up-to-date by a steady inflow of the best journals and mono-
graphs is obvious. The Hbrary is the natural center for creative effort
and hence for all research, since there is no loss of energy so needless as
is the doing again that which has been well done before. All new work
must be based upon knowledge that has gone before. The breath of Hfe
— 19 —
of all research is the joy of seeking for the unknown. Chance discoveries
of great moment in medicine are no longer to be made at random. Piece
by piece must new truths be found and correlated. Each investigator
must rest his work upon that of others. He must stand on the shoulders
of the past if he is to look into the future. To know what has gone be-
fore is only possible where accumulated records are at hand. In the
Library which we dedicate todav is massed the product of thousands^ of
minds ' some great and far-seeing, some small but earnest, but all seeking
after truth. The great function of such a library as this is to accumulate
and classify and make ready of access the knowledge that the world has
already gained and to keep abreast with the steady current of advancing
medical science, choosing from it all that seems likely to be worth while.
Such a function is a difficult and responsible one and one that will be
performed in fuller and fuller measure by this library as it meets more
and more with the support of the great state in which it is located.^ In-
deed its interest should extend far beyond the confines of any one city or
state for no such collection of medical books is to be found elsewhere on
this continent west of the Mississippi nor along the shores of our great
ocean so soon to be expanded by the Panama Canal, itself a product of
human skill that has been made possible by the advance of the science of
medicine. . , . ,,,.,-„ -i i-
The Stanford Medical Department with its Medical Building, in-
cluding Lane Hall, its Lane Hospital and its Lane Library, are, as you
have alreadv heard from my colleague, Dr. Rixford, the gift of the em-
inent surgeon, Levi Cooper Lane, and of the Faculty of Cooper Medical
College. Dr. Lane first established the Cooper Medical College, named
by him for his uncle. Dr. Elias Cooper. But as the future of medical in-
struction must lie with the universities, and as sound medical instruction
must rest on university courses in physiology, chemistry, biology and
phvsics, Dr. Lane made arrangements whereby the Board of Directors of
Cooper' Medical College were able to deed this property to Stanford Uni-
versity on the sole condition that the University should use the gift of
money and buildings for medical instruction. The corporation of the
Cooper Medical College has dissolved itself, patriotically turning over its
good will and all its properties, hopes and achievements to the larger in-
stitution, and Stanford University has loyally accepted the trust and is
doing the best work it knows how to do in the line of the acceptance of
these pledges. . , ■ •
The function of the privately endowed university, as the authorities
of Stanford understand it, is to set standards in education and to uphold
these standards. It must set standards in service to society as well as
within its own classrooms. _ _ _
In whatever way a school of medicine can help the people it is its
duty to render aid. The hospital is the laboratory of clinical medicine.
This has become an axiom in modern medical instruction. But a further
duty is incumbent on the university hospital of today. It should be so
— 20 —
ill.
conducted and controlled as to serve as a model for all that is essential
and worthy in the institutional care of the sick. Only in such a hospital,
with its numerous internes and assistants and its trained staff, can satis-
factory control be made of new methods of treatment and such treat-
ments standardized for the use of others. The elevation of nursing
standards, the thoroughness of case study and care that inevitably follow
the well-trained student into the hospital and ward are the great boon of
a university hospital. All this involves an effort at the best in research,
in training, and in character building.
The funds of a private institution are limited. It can call on no
legislature for help if it has undertaken more than it can carry out. It
must be sufficient unto itself. This means limitation. It can never cover
the whole range of knowledge, nor the whole range of practical achieve-
ment. It cannot make its campus co-extensive with the state. It cannot
provide for multitudes of students, unless, dependent on fees, it makes
these fees so high as to be prohibitive to self-helping men and women.
To this class belongs the vast majority of the students we in the West
find worth while.
But the private institution has its own advantages. It has freedom
of development. It is dependent on no outside influence for its direction.
It can undertake what it deems best worth doing. It can insist on the
highest standards. It is above all temptation to grant university titles or
degrees to the products of four years of frivolity, dissipation and sham.
Above all, it has the privilege as well as the duty of making its profes-
sional courses of such a character that it can be sure that every graduate
is really a university man. It is not claimed that the private university
has any monopoly of high standards or of efficient practice. It claims
only that no other type of institution has the right to loftier ideals. In
proportion as it is true to its opportunity its aims should be the highest
within its range of possibilities.
No institution can do better than its best. If it falls short of this,
it has no adequate reason for being. And Stanford University means to
justify herself. She is pledged to justify herself in the direction of med-
ical instruction. And after all, in the multiplicity of medical schools in-
struction in medicine is nowhere overdone. The profession of physician
is overcrowded because its men are undertrained. It is a very true ex-
pression that there is always "room at the top." In medicine as else-
where in life the crowd is around the bottom of the ladder.
A young medical student in New York, it is said, committed suicide
not long ago, leaving behind him this word : "I die because there is room
for no more doctors." Room for no more doctors just now when in the
history of the world it is most worth while to be a doctor! Now, when
the progress of the sciences and arts which deal with sickness and health
have given the intelligent and honest doctor a power no one else has ever
had before over the forces of sin and death !
Another medical student was asked how he dared return to take so
— 21 —
much time to prepare for a profession already so overcrowded. "I pro-
pose to practice medicine," he said, "those in the crowd must look out
for themselves."
Frederick Denison Maurice once said : "Make your system of edu-
cation such that a great man may be formed by it, and there will be man-
hood in your little men of which you do not dream."
And' to such a system of instruction in medicine, a system which
may form great men if great men come within its reach, this beautiful
Library is dedicated. And all resources of Stanford University stand
pledged to make its purpose good.
I said just now that medical research is now on the firing line of the
advance of science. It has left behind it as outworn garments all med-
ical theories, and all schools of medicine. The medical advance is the
work of no school, the offspring of no preconceived theory.
One of my early students, on graduating in medicine, was asked to
what school he belonged. His answer was, "I have nothing to do with
schools. I am trying to practice m.edicine." Just as soon as men se-
riously try to practice medicine, schools of medicine cease to exist. These
belong to the metaphysics of the dark ages, when men. in default of
science, tried to practice philosophy.
At the most, or at the best, a school indicates merely a preference for
one mode of therapeutics over another, or over all others, a matter of
very minor importance as compared with knowing the nature of the ail-
ment in question and of the causes which brought it about. Accuracy of
scientific knowledge is fatal to the prearranged theory of treatment of
disease, the basis of any school of theoretical medicine. Accuracy of
knowledge goes beyond symptoms or surface indications. It is with
symptoms and symptoms onh'. in default of knowledge that varying
schools of medical therapeutics become possible. When we know the
actual conditions which give rise to symptoms, all methods must rest on
these conditions.
All art is based on science. Science is human experience tested and
set in order. Art is knowledge in action. An art which is not based on
knowledge becomes a mystery or a trade. The practice of medicine
through the ages has been one or the other or both. It is a trade when
the physician apprentice follows his master about, learns his ways, his
prescriptions and his professional dignity. It is a myster}', when practice
is based on some theory of therapeutics which goes outside of human ex-
perience for its justification.
Science is alike to all men who have grasped its data and its con-
clusions. Art will vary with the personality of the individuals who prac-
tice it. Sound medicine must rest on science. Whoever treats the ills
of the human body successfully must know this body in health and in
disease. He must know the range of its disorders, its abuses, its disloca-
tions and its parasites. Those who try to heal without knowledge of the
actual conditions with which they deal are of necessity imposters.
— 22 —
The limit of "medical freedom" is a very plain and natural one.
Let the patient take whatever kind of treatment he may wish, but let no
treatment be administered by persons who have no knowledge of the
fundamental facts of medical science. If the requirement of technical
knowledge is fatal to any school of therapeutics, it is time that that par-
ticular form of robbery should be done away with. Taking chances with
the lives of others for the money there is in it is not a profession to be
encouraged.
The basis of the varying schools of medicine lies not in science but
in the varying theories of symptoms. In the old days, when micro-
organisms were unknown, when physiology was elemental and pharma-
cology itself a form of metaphysics, it is not strange that symptoms en-
grossed the attention of the practitioner and that there grew up widely
differing theories in regard to their treatment.
It was natural in those days, that men should face symptoms with
remedies calculated to remove or obscure them. This method, contempt-
uously designated as allopathy, "unlike treatment." as the drug and
symptom were unlike, had in it the germ of better things, because it gave
play for experiment and was not bound hand and foot by any predeter-
mined notion. It was a step forward from the idea of the dark ages,
that each disease had some definite predestined remedy, that for each
ailment, that is a special group of svmptoms, there was somewhere, some-
how, some cure mysteriously provided in nature if we could only find it
out.
As the plant world lies all about us, as most plants secrete or pro-
duce something with a definite odor or taste, balms, resins, aromatic oils,
bitter alkaloids, strange substances useless for anv purpose unless it be
that of medication, it was natural that men should turn their attention to
these substances. Some of these products or simples showed strange
effectiveness. Others did no harm and were therefore suspected of doing
good. Quinine was thought to cure malaria by setting up a feverish
condition like that arising from malaria itself. Digitalis controlled the
action of the heart. Mandrake, senna, rhubarb, kept the bowels open.
The pink was death to worms. Yerba buena, yerba santa, sage tea, cat-
nip tea, tansy tea, sassafras tea, as well as tar, molasses and sulphur were
■'good for the blood," especially in the spring, and the tonic effect of
almost any bitter bark dissolved in alcohol was highly appreciated.
Out of this notion that a specific disease had a specific cure, natur-
ally arose the form of quackery involved in the patent medicine. Its prac-
tical value lay in the elimination of the doctor, or rather in postponing
his arrival until near the end. It is very simple, by reading an adver-
tisement in an easy-going newspaper, or by the perusal of an almanac,
to pick out your own disease from the Hst of symptoms graphically set
forth. Almost everyone has felt headaches, twinges, blurrings, ringings,
smartings, achings, givings and misgivings, and these will indicate the
necessary drug. If this drug be essentially whisky and water made
— 23 —
sweet or bitter by some easy stain, or if some more virulent or effective
poison is used, there is likely to be enough of apparent satisfaction or of
change in symptoms to justify a written testimonial and another bottle
of the drug. Or if the basal constituent of the medicine be merely water,
the effect of hope with the lack of visible harm is likely to lead to the
same results. In either case, the self-medication is likely to produce no
effect or an effect worse than nothing.
While much that is now sold in the drug stores represents merely a
harmless or sometimes useful physician's prescription, the aggregate re-
sult of the patent medicine is the 'building up of gigantic systems of rob-
bery on the one hand and a corresponding damage to public health on
the other.
The way out of the patent medicine domination Hes in the better
training of physicians on the one hand and the enlightenment of public
opinion on the other. No more effective agency exists for the forming of
public opinion than an aggressive administration of the bureau at Wash-
ington which deals with pure food and pure drugs. No single agency in
this direction has counted for so much as the personal work of one man,
who has spent his life in fighting frauds and poisons. But we must have
a hundred Wileys in the public service where now we have not one.
Among the host of specifics, men naturally sought for some guiding
rule, some informing spirit that would tell them beforehand and once for
all how to match these diseases with the predestined healing agent.
Sometimes this was found in the looks of the plant. Its' flowers or leaves
or roots somehow simulated the disease it was bound to cure. Thus the
figwort was denominated scrophnlaria, apparently for its scrofulous ap-
pearance. The liver-shaped leaves of hepatica, the liverwort, showed
dearly what was expected of it. And in the ignorance of what was really
the niatter and of what really happened after a remedy was absorbed,
there were as many successes as failures, and the dark mysteries of the
profession prevented any following up of either.
A more scientific application of the method of resemblances lay in
the study of the effects produced by a drug in relation to the symptoms
of the malady it was to cure. Like symptoms, like effects. Like cures
like. If your patient is troubled with colic, give him a colic-producing
drug; if with eczema give him something to make the skin smart. The
same principle would hold for all diseases.
But with this went the saving clause of homeopathy, or like treat-
ment — Don't give much and give good nursing. As time, patience and
good nursing are the best of drugs, this method has had a large vogue
as well as a large effectiveness. If it is based on a sound study of the
human body, its defects, its slips and its parasites, this method must
merge into the real practice of medicine. Lor, knowing the distemper,
its causes and its range, the method of treatment is a minor matter.
The idea that a disease has a definite drug as its remedy, whether in
large quantities or small, is a relic of the middle ages. Drugs do not
24 —
heal anything. Some are palHative, resting in the category of vaseline,
cold cream or talcum powder, some kill parasites directly as quinine kills
the animal organisms known as malaria. Sulphur is death to the itch,
the visible cause of the distemper once thought almost incurable, and
known as the "gall struck inwards." Others do evil as stimulants or
counter irritants, that good may come, helping on the one hand through
the incidental damage on the other.
But the metaphysical relation of drug to symptom has no existence
and has passed out of medical practice never to return.
With doubts of the efficiency of drugs as remedies came theories of
therapeutics by which all drugs were discarded. Orthopathy in its day
rejected them all, relying on the well-known disposition of nature to heal
her wounds whenever she is let alone. Hydropathy set people to sweat-
ing under close envelopes of wet sheets, often, it is true, to their great
advantage. I can remember when the Wet Sheet Packing and the Over
Soul were the test and signal of a progressive nature, much as today are
the Referendum and Recall.
Mind-healing in various forms has always found its place. It is a
notorious fact that when the symptoms of any disease are graphically set
forth, the average reader finds most of these symptoms in himself. It is
only a step to the conclusion that these symptoms are the cause of the
disease. If you can create the impression that the symptoms do not exist
you take away the disease. For disease and symptoms are alike the
product of morbidity of mind. To have faith is to cure this morbidity.
"Sin, sorrow and sickness," says one of the leaders of this form of thera-
peutics, "are all three illusions of the sinful soul. * * * They are but
troubled dreams of a darkened soul. * * * In afflictions of disease and
dread and death one must say 'This is a dream.' Then it becomes a
dream and we rise above it into an atmosphere of perfect serenity. * * *
We need not deal with the body, for the body does not exist. It is dull,
heavy, aching because it is the dead residuum of dream. When we forget
it, it is no longer there. Treat a belief in sickness as you would a sin,
with sudden dismissal."
It is undoubtedly true that a serene spirit is a valuable agencv in
the recovery from disease. It is likewise true that suggestion has a
mighty potency when it is rightly applied. It is a legitimate and recog-
nized branch of therapeutics, which may be destined to have a wide ap-
pHcation in the future treatment of disorders of the nervous system. But
it is likewise true that suggestion heals no broken bones, a spirit unper-
turbed gives no safeguard against poisoned mosquitoes, and the power
of the will and the imagination is potent chiefly against disorders of the
imagination and the will.
The first and most im.portant thing in any treatment is to find out
what is the matter and then, if may be, to remove the cause from which
the symptoms flow. No system of philosophy, no cult of religion gives
us help as to matters of fact. It does not strengthen our knowledge of
— 25 —
the demands of the body to deny the body's existence. The whole fabric
of modern science, the 'whole fabric of modern civihzation is based on
the conception of the reality of external things. The sanity of life is
conditioned on our belief in realities, the mental states produced by con-
tact with external things as distinct from illusions, those mental states
arising from conditions within ourselves. This distinction is the founda-
tion of safety in Ufe. Our body through its nervous system is cognizant
of realities. 'The defects in this nervous system may cloud our view with
illusions. The art of sound living is to discriminate between the two sets
of impressions. To confuse reality and illusion is to confuse life and
death. To show that perception and reason may sometimes be deceived
is not to add reality to the figments of imagination. It does not advance
science to doubt the things we know to be true in order to give proof to
propositions we know to be false.
We may be therefore certain that progressive medicine will still be-
lieve in the reality of the human body and the rational veracity of the
world of sense.
We may be sure that medical science does not grow in accordance
with the theories of any school of medicine or of metaphysics. It is ad-
vanced by the study of things as they are, by the use of tools of precision
on definite problems, by the microscope and scalpel, the test tube and
reagent, by the culture 'of germs and the discovery of germ-killers. It
grows by probing the actual causes of bodily disturbances and the actual
removal of such causes. It grows, as all sciences have grown, by the
method of induction, by putting two and two together and verifying the
apparent existence of four as a resultant.
And in the future of medicine, the mere removal of disease must
play more and more a subordinate part. Most disease can be prevented.
Above all therapeutics stands sanitation. It is possible to remove causes
of disease long before any disease begins. It is possible to heal our pa-
tients long before they are ever sick. Our knowledge in many fields is
now adequate for this result. No one can be attacked by an infectious
disease unless we have somehow or other permitted the infection.
In modern war, it now costs on the average about $15,000 to kill a
man. In the late Boer war, this expense ran up to nearly $40,000. It is
cheaper to save men. It is cheaper to stop killing. In our own country,
in time of peace, when nothing but peace is possible among civilized na-
tions, we spend nearly a million dollars a day on matters concerned with
past or future wars ; $850,000 a day on future wars alone, that we may
not be caught napping when the day of the impossible shall arrive._
A wiser or more civilized nation would give some part of this sum
to the prevention or stamping out of the worst of the infectious diseases.
For if we are napping these are sure to come. The danger of the red
plague, present everywhere, is infinitely greater than that of war with any
part of Europe or o'f Asia. The terrible infliction of the unknown para-
site which shows itself as infantile paralysis awaits the strong arm of the
— 26 —
people to set it aside entirely. No disease would long exist if we made
adequate quarantine provision. Its germs, animal or plant, must be
carried from man to man or from animal to man, else the race of para-
sites would die out. Now that we know what our enemies are it is pos-
sible for us to fight them. This I said in a review of Tyndall's work
which I printed thirty-five years ago. Now that we know what our
enemies are,_ and now that we know that they can be fought successfully
only by national and international co-operation, it is our duty thus to
fight them. It shows a lack of national manliness to continue to bear
these ills when a little energy with the knowledge we have is adequate to
throw them all off.
I am still a young man, I am sure of that. As I said once before,
when I hear the students speak of Old Jordan, I know that they mean the
river of Palestine, or perchance in these days a forbidden brand of alco-
holics. They do not mean me. It is not so many years since I received
the degree of Doctor of Medicine, — and I hasten to'say that I have never
practiced medicine and never intended to, so that my failures in knowl-
edge have never harmed any one, nor brought me a dollar of unearned
increment.
But at that time, in 1875, the words "bacterium," "bacillus," "mi-
crobe," were all unknown, all slumbering together in the Greek lexicon.
This lexicon gave no suspicion that bacteriovi and logos would come to-
gether to form a science, and that the one science most vitally related to
human life. The world of science and therefore the province of med-
icine knew nothing of invisible one-celled animals and plants, bacteria
and protozoa, which flourish and run their courses in the Hfe blood of
living animals.
The source of infection in disease was then called a "virus" and the
growth of a virus was an extension of death. Carlyle had said that a
fallen leaf must still have life in it else how could it rot. But neither the
poet nor the prophet realized that this life which tore the fallen leaf to
pieces was the life of a multifarious group of one-celled vegetation whose
function it is to return all organic matter not still active back to the uni-
verse in its constituent elements. In those days malaria was an evil
spirit or miasma, the product of bad air or maybe of bad water. All
plagues were of the same sort. No one suspected the mosquito, the fly,
the flea, the louse, the bed bug or the wood tick of harboring any vices
worse than those which their bite or their presence suggests. There was
no science of infectious diseases and therefore no art in curing or pre-
venting them. The most that could be done was to let them run their
course, allaying as might be some of their most annoying symptoms.
Antiseptics were only guess work. We had not heard of carbolic
acid, or barely heard of it, and the coal tar products with their varied
possibilities of usefulness and mischief still lay in the fossil beds of the
earth. Surgery was a matter of luck, a gamble, as the phrase is, still
conducted as has been said, "along the lines laid down by the early Egyp-
— 27 —
tians." There had been no Lister to show the reason for clean knives,
clean hands and clean air, and the battlefields of those days were a wild
riot of the germs of gangrene and blood poisoning.
As surgery did not exist, we knew nothing of preventive surgery or
the surgery of pathology.
A-s medicine dealt with symptoms, we knew nothing of pharmacol-
ogy. These were the days before Michael Foster, and physiology was
still merelv a series of deductions from the facts of elementary anatomy.
The nature and structure of the body cell was very scantily known.
Without knowing the germ cell, the physical basis of heredity, the science
of heredity was unknown, and without accurate kno\yledge of heredity,
the science of eugenics can have no existence or meaning.
In these times, the facts and laws of pathology are to the trained phy-
sician as essential as the alphabet or the multiplication table to the rest
of the world. But we poor practical doctors of our day had to get along
without it. Science had not reached so far, and we had to be practical
men because perforce we could not be scientific. Dr. Charles Sedgwick
Minot has well pointed out the distinction. "The only important differ-
ence," he says, "between the practical doctor and the scientific doctor is
that 'the patients of the practical doctor are more Hkely to die." In heal-
ing men, as in other lines of industry, the first requisite is to know how.
To know how is the essence of science.
The next stage of the scientific doctor is not merely to cure his
patients but to help conduct the aftairs of the community so that men and
women will no longer come to him to be cured. Half the disease of the
world comes from the infection of the crowd. Nine-tenths of the infec-
tion of the crowd could be spared if the knowledge we have could work
itself out in governmental action.
The governments of the world are about the poorest tools we know
for the achievement of good deeds. They are controlled by tradition, by
prejudice, by the noise of fife and drum. They are ruled by the influence
of caste and privilege. They are bigoted and wasteful and when they
deal with the individual life they are likely to be careless and unjust.
But in deaKng with the great plagues of the world, the black, the
yellow, the red and all the poisonous array of health-breaking parasites,
the government is the only tool we have. The individual is helpless, the
community is all. The acts of the community cannot rise much above its
knowledge. All effective government is by public opinion. The people
must learn the facts of pathology and of sanitation. There is no school
of medicine which can honorably come between them and the truth.
And that the Lane Library of Stanford University, the Medical De-
partment of Stanford University, and the University itself, may do their
part in the great work of bringing health to the people, that they may co-
operate with the sister schools and with all other good agencies to good
ends, is the motive behind the functions of today.
— 28-
THE WORDS OF DEDICATION
The Reverend Bradford Leavitt, minister of the First Unitarian
Church of San Francisco, read the following passage from Ecclesiasticus :
Honor a physician with the honours due unto him : for verily the
Lord hath created him. For from the Most High cometh healing; and
from the king he shall receive a gift. The skill of the physician shall
lift up his head ; and in the sight of great men he shall be admired. The
Lord created medicines out of the earth ; and a prudent man will not
despise them. With them doth he heal a man, and taketh away his pain.
There is a time when in their very hands is the issue of life. For they
also shall beseech the Lord, that he may prosper them in giving relief
and in healing for the maintenance of life. And from him is peace upon
the face of the earth.
At the close of the exercises while the audience was standing for
the benediction, he pronounced the words of dedication as follows:
"Almighty God, standing as in thy presence, solemnly, we dedicate
this building to medical practice and medical research, to the service of
humanity, which is the service of God."
APPENDIX
The following account of the Lane Library Building is contributed
by Professor Ray Lyman Wilbur, Executive Head of the Department of
Medicine.
The new Lane Medical Library Building, in which the volumes of
the University's Department of Medicine are now shelved and at the ser-
vice of the students of the Department and of the medical profession, is
not onlv thoroughly modern and convenient, but beautiful as well. Con-
structed on a steel frame, the exterior is of smooth Colusa sandstone of
a soft grey color, while the interior gives an impression of spacious sub-
stantiality and quiet.
The general reading room, with its open shelves of reference vol-
umes, its broad reading tables and its quiet green walls, is particularly
fortunate. To this room is added beauty and dignity, also by the mural
paintings from the brush of Arthur F. Mathews, of San Francisco.
These pictures are the gift of Mrs. Henrietta Zeile. They occupy three
large panels on the east side of the Reading Room, adding a fine touch
of color to the somewhat somber green wall. One shows beneath a
spreading oak an Indian medicine man — the primitive art of healing.
Another is a mediaeval towered city with a red robed doctor reassuring
a group of frightened people who cower before a woman with the "evil
eye," In the central panel Urania, in starry blue kneels, with her hand
upon a sphere, Therpsichore with dancing girls embroidered on her
cloak, ivy-crowned Thalia, dark draped Melpomene and their sister
muses surround a white clad woman, Hygeia, and. a child. The work is
— 29 —
in Mathew's best style, the flesh tones of the life size figures wonderful,
the landscapes beautiful with purple shadows, rolling hills and sunlit
clouds.
The reading rooms for the special libraries, such as that on ophthal-
mology and otology, the gift of Professor Adolph Barkan, are also ex-
cellent, the lighting arrangements for night work, through reflected and
diffused lights, being particularly good.
The stack rooms are absolutely fire-proof, and can be cut off by
metal doors from the rest of the building. There is no wood at all in
the construction of this part of the building, the floors and walls being
of concrete, the doors and stacks of metal.
The forty thousand volumes which at present constitute the library
and make it the largest of any of the university medical libraries in Amer-
ica, are easily accommodated on the shelves, which can hold half as many
more, without further addition. There is, moreover, available space in
the building as it now stands which can be filled with stacks to bring the
capacity up to something like three times the number of volumes the
University now owns. After that, the building can be extended out over
the lot next to the Library on Sacramento street, which the University
owns, and space provided for indefinite expansion.
The architect of the Library is Mr. Albert Pissis, who through this
building has added to the high reputation he already held as the designer
of many of the finest structures in San Francisco.
The dedication of the Lane Medical Library Building marks the
completion of the first stage in the development of the Stanford Univer-
sity Medical Department. The Trustees of the University, acting as trus-
tees of the funds left by Dr. and Mrs. Lane, have constructed a building
that will be of great service to the medical profession of the West and
of particular service to the Medical Department. In fact its possession
is a great asset in the development of proper medical teaching and makes
the new Medical Department unique in this country.
The high standard that Stanford set in medical education, requiring
three years of University work for admission into medicine, placed the
Medical Department at once in the front rank of such institutions. The
requirements are equal to those of Cornell and Western Reserve LTniver-
sity and not unlike those of Harvard, Columbia and Pennsylvania. Johns
Hopkins requires an A. B. degree for admission ; Harvard admits upon
an A. B. degree but permits students who have covered certain special
subjects to enter after two years of University work. It has been a source
of gratification that, in spite of these high requirements, forty-six students
have registered in Medicine even before a single class has been graduated.
The class of five, sent up to San Francisco in January, 1910, has now
increased to ten, two students having joined it from the University of
California last year, and one each from Johns Hopkins, the University
of Chicago and Cooper Medical College this year. It is anticipated that
— 30 —
there will be a slow but steady growth in the number of students but that
the number admitted will always be small.
The space made available in the Clinical and Laboratory Building
by the removal of the Library, together with a portion of the former
auditorium, is being remodeled and within a month the Medical Depart-
ment will have the best equipped outpatient clinics west of Chicago.
July I, 1912, the control of Lane Hospital passed into the hands of the
Clinical Committee of the Medical Faculty so that the University Hos-
pital is under the direct supervision of the instructing staff, a most im-
portant advantage in proper medical teaching and one possessed by but
few American medical schools. Arrangements have been made by the
Board of Trustees to facilitate the business management of the Hospital
and Medical Department in San Francisco and to improve the service for
the private rooms. The home formerly occupied by Dr. and Mrs. Lane,
which is in the block opposite the hospital, is now being used as a tem-
porary nurses' home.
As at present organized, with the Lane Medical Library, Lane Hos-
pital, the outpatient clinics and the laboratories in San Francisco, the ex-
cellent services at the San Francisco Hospital, and with the laboratories
of Chemistry, Physiolog}-. Anatomy, Bacteriology, Pharmacology,
Physics, Zoolog}' and Botany on the campus, there is no better Medical
Department for a limited number of students in this country.
Like all growing things, the Medical Department has many press-
ing needs. Among them are the construction of a new nurses' home, for
which the land is available, the construction of a maternity home and
women's clinic, for which land is likewise available, and the construction
of a new children's hospital. The further endowment of Lane Hospital
and the endowment of certain professorships is very much needed in
order that the institution may grow in the best way. A number of
alumni and others have contributed books and money to the Library and
money to the Hospital, both for the upkeep of beds and for special ex-
penses. Recentlv Mr. Felton B. Elkins has presented the Department
with funds for the salary for the chief obstetrical nurse for the present
year.
In general, it can be said that for the short time that Stanford has
been engaged in medical education, she has made a good record. Future
development has been planned for in such a way that advantage can be
taken of any help, great or small, that comes to the Medical Department.
The advent of Stanford into San Francisco is of much significance.
The number of people concerned is alone worthy of mention. Besides the
Faculty and students, there is a metropolitan hospital with an average of
150 patients, changing from day to day, a Training School of 80 nurses,
other employees of like number and from 50,000 to 60,000 visits per year
in the out-patient clinical departments.
— 31 —
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